Reply #5: Confirms a lot of stereotypes, and concerns

[LostHighway]

One thing that you hear sometimes is that Tea Party people are just libertarians, that they're just for small government and for fiscal responsibility. I've heard this countered to the idea that Tea Party people are semi-fascist nuts, with the suggestion being that the signs that they carry and the rhetoric that they use really aren't what they appear to be. Instead, the tea party is merely misunderstood. But libertarians on the whole would never answer questions of pollsters like the Tea Party people have. Religion isn't a big issue with them, in fact many are atheists or generally hold overly religious people in contempt--because those folks have infringed on others' liberty in the past. Particularly telling is the statistic that says that 64% of Tea Party people don't care that some folks have more opportunities in life than others. This would violate a core principle that folks who are libertarians would believe in, which is to say that the playing field should be equal so that people can rise or fall according to their own merits.

In the '90s there was a trend towards a popular small government libertarianism within some sectors, and while this too had some overtones that were suspiciously right wing, for instance ominous talk about a New World Order, in general it could be argued that the basic principles weren't over the top in the sense of being anti-democratic or anti-liberty. The Tea Party is different, and this poll helps show how exactly they're different. Not your father's libertarians.